WORK SAMPLES
The following describes a sampling of Citizen Film’s experimentation with educational public engagement catalyzed by the Covenant and Jim Joseph Foundations, which are devoted to Jewish education. – Outreach was conducted by Citizen Film’s partners the JCC-SF, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Magnes Collection at UC Berkeley.
Click the photos below to view work Samples.
LIBERATING LENS
Jewish photographers who were outsiders to American culture had enormous impact in changing how Americans came to see themselves. This collaboration with scholar Deborah Dash Moore –a class and a gallery exhibition- investigates the liberating power of their cameras.
Please click the thumbnail image to view a video excerpt.
EQUIVALENTS
Collaboration between scholar Deborah Dash Moore, filmmaker Sam Ball and the Contemporary Jewish Museum led to a series of creative exercises inspired by pioneering Jewish American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946.). These videos showcased on an interactive iPad exhibition accompanying Alfred Stieglitz photos on an adjacent wall, meditate on the fleeting moments just before Stieglitz transformed transient clouds into permanent works of art.“No two moments are alike,” Stieglitz said. So he photographed clouds as “equivalents” of “profound life experience.”
Please click the thumbnail to view an excerpt from this series.
A VIRTUAL SUKKAH
Citizen Film designed a teen-created component of a JCC-SF digital sukkah installation in the atrium of 3200 California Street. Citizen Film recruited 100 teen artists to participate. These teens collaborated with Citizen Film, the JCC SF and its Chief Jewish Officer as well as the CJM TAC and Jewish Film Institute to create a series of photos re-interpreting the holiday of Sukkoth. A Virtual Sukkah is a photo project inviting teens & young adults to investigate their surroundings by taking photos that re-imagine the Jewish guidelines for building a sukkah. Participants look for manifestations of rules like this in their immediate environments, then create images and captions to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.
WENDY MACNAUGHTON DRAWS CASTRO COMMONS
This video is part of a collaboration with visual artist Wendy MacNaughton for a “digital sukkah” installation in the JCC San Francisco atrium as part of the exhibition, “We are not permanent but we are not temporary.”
Please click the thumbnail image to view a video excerpt.
WHAT WE CARRY WITH US: REFUGEE STORYLABS
This short film is part of a collaboration between Citizen Film, the Magnes Collection at UC Berkeley and young refugees who are participants in curator Francesco Spagnolo’s Mapping Diasporas program. Short films tell the stories of how emotions inhabit objects curated by the refugees. An immersive video installation was created in tandem with an exhibition of physical artifacts at UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection. The exhibition compared and contrasted testimony about objects curated by holocaust survivors and objects curated by contemporary refugees.
A subsequent event focused on LGBT refugees was held online during the pandemic.
Please click the thumbnail image to view a video excerpt.